If San Antonio were a stock market, 2013 would go down as a bull market with many winners and relatively few losers. The momentum gained in recent years and continued these past 12 months portends well for 2014.

Everyone has his or her top story of the year. I prefer to look at the transformative events and projects that are contributing to a smarter, more ambitious San Antonio – a city that preserves its history, celebrates its culture, stays comfortable in its own skin, yet sets new expectations for our future.

The opening of 8.5 mile Mission Reach of the San Antonio River gives the city a unique linear park that restores a river, reconnects its to the Spanish colonial missions and serves as a new artery through a resurgent Southside. The coming Confluence Park will help underscore the Mission Reach’s value as more than a park, but also a learning laboratory.

A boy curiously admires the Mission Reach during its grand opening ceremony on Oct. 5, 2013. Photo by Iris Dimmick.

Last month’s City Council vote that paves the way for H-E-B to build a new grocery store on the southern edge of downtown should accelerate downtown residential growth, and remove a major barrier for some to moving into the urban core.

South Main Avenue residents have placed signs on their lawns in protest of H-E-B’s request to close the street. Photo by Iris Dimmick.

The debate over the grocery store, the closure of South Main Avenue in front of the H-E-B Arsenal, and other aspects of the company’s long-term, $100 million campus expansion provoked significant opposition in the neighborhood. It wasn’t the only development to do so.

While the sale of KWEX-TV to Greystar, a multifamily developer and property management company from Charleston, S.C., will bring a new $55 million, 355-unit residential complex to an undeveloped stretch of the River Walk connecting downtown with King William, many felt the 1955 building that housed the nation’s first Spanish-language television studios merited protection. The network’s owners didn’t share that reverence and to date, no alternative plans have been made to preserve the history other than a site marker near the broadcaster’s antennae, which will remain on the property.

A different kind of opposition has taken shape over VIA’s modern streetcar project, a proposed north-south, east-west transportation strategy for spurring economic development and reducing vehicle traffic and bus congestion in the urban core. The project has shaped up as a suburban versus urban fight. Downtown advocates are tired of seeing tax dollars support costly highway expansion projects, such as the U.S. 281-Loop 1604 construction, while suburban interests seem indifferent to center city investment. Selection of a new chairman able to replace outgoing Chair Henry Muñoz III and build broader consensus for the project could prove critical.

Change and protest seem to travel hand in hand, the latter being the price of the accomplishing the former. If so, the advent of even more new development and redevelopment projects means more change and with it, more protest.

With Mayor Julián Castro stepping into a new role of urban mayor with a national profile and strong contacts in the Obama administration, 2013 was a year where Castro was often absent from the city on weekends, and maintained a low profile on hotly debated projects, such as the Univisión demolition. With three years or less remaining in his mayoral career, potential candidates to succeed him are entering the public conversation with no clear heir apparent, while speculation grows that Castro is on the short list of names Hilary Clinton would consider for vice president if she wins the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

Philanthropic gifts in 2013 make it the Year of the Children. A $20 million gift from Charles Butt, chairman and CEO of H-E-B, has laid the foundation for a national-class Children’ Museum, whose walls are now going up on Broadway across from Brackenridge Park, what will be a six-acre, indoor-outdoor learning experience for the city’s children.

Model of the San Antonio Children’s Museum by Lake/Flato Architects.

Silver Venture’s founder Kit Goldsbury made a $20 million donation to help create the city’s first, free-standing children’s hospital. The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio operated by Christus Santa Rosa Health System is under construction on the western edge of downtown. A second children’s hospital is still in the works for the South Texas Medical Center, a tentative joint venture of University of Texas Health Science Center and Methodist Hospital. With the downtown children’s hospital now a reality, however, the often-bitter debate between those favoring inner city medical facilities and services and those favoring the northwest sector of the city has been quieted.

Economic recovery brought the first new condo developments into the urban core, meaning young professional and empty nest Baby Boomers can choose to buy rather than lease newly-constructed units, ranging from Steve Yndo’s East Quincy project just steps from The Pearl, to the Casa Blanca Lofts on North Alamo to the Davis Sprinkle-designed project on Roosevelt Avenue in the Lone Start district on the site of the former Rolling Home Trailer Courts.

Geekdom, Rackspace Co-Founder Graham Weston’s tech incubator and co-working space, finds a permanent downtown home next year at the newly-acquired Rand Building, now undergoing an interior facelift. Many other historic buildings in the downtown space remain empty or underutilized even as the inventory of available commercial real estate space remains high. The desire of CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby to vacate the two current buildings the energy utility occupies on the River Walk could prove to be the most interesting downtown real estate play in 2014.

World Heritage Site status for the Missions lost momentum when the United States stopped UNESCO dues payments during a dispute over the status of Palestinian authorities at the United Nations. The delay is an unwelcome one, but it also gives the city and TxDOT the opportunity to contemplate serious street improvements linking the center city and the missions. While the Mission Reach offers a splendid natural connection to the Missions via bicycle or on foot, the vast majority of visitors will continue to reach the Missions on surface streets, which are marred by blight.

A family admires the recently restored Mission Concepcion during a Something Monday bike ride in July 2013. Photo by Iris Dimmick.

The SA2020 initiative will reach the halfway point in its existence between its launch and the end of the Mayor Castro era. Progress on several of the 11 vision goals has been so strong that 2014 might be good time to set even more ambitious goals.

The Rivard Report turns two years old on Feb. 13, and we anticipate a new site design to help celebrate the occasion, one that reflects our development from our initial launch as a blog to what has developed into a platform for many community voices. In addition to our growing tribe of freelance contributors, we published more than 100 people from all corners of the community. Many of our best stories, and certainly our most widely-read and shared articles came from the community.

Readers make the real difference when they accept our invitation to become center stage actors or simply step forward with their own writing proposals. The conversation is often insightful, always passionate, sometimes divided, but always civil and respectful. We like it that way and you tell us that you do, too. Thanks for helping us double our traffic in our second year. December, like most months in 2013, was a record traffic month. We will work even harder in 2014 to connect and showcase the city’s most creative and dynamic people and endeavors. We’re bullish on San Antonio.

2 thoughts on “San Antonio in 2013: A Year of Promise and Progress”

Skimmed the story quickly to find mention of the most important ‘promise’ to me .. The mention of the passage of the NDO .. unless I overlooked it …. I didn’t see it in your ‘year of promise and progress’ .. ???